Tom Felton Embraces Draco's Return on Broadway as Potter Universe Expands

Tom Felton steps onto the Broadway stage every night and the audience erupts. He had braced himself for the novelty to wear thin—a week, maybe two—but the roar has not diminished. Nearly fifteen years have passed since he last played Draco Malfoy on film. Now, after ten months performing the character in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, he finds himself still surprised by the constancy of it all.

We meet in a dressing room at NBC Studios, just off Times Square, where Felton has just finished a television appearance and will soon return to the stage for another performance. He speaks with the ease of someone genuinely moved by what surrounds him. His mother has seen the show five times. His father is coming next month. His hundred-year-old grandfather will watch this interview when it airs—a detail Felton mentions with the kind of pride that suggests family support still matters as much as the applause.

What strikes him most is the composition of the audience itself. More than two decades after the first Harry Potter film, people approach him shouting "Draco" who were not yet born when he first took the role. The character has outlived its own era. "I thought the applause would stop in the first week and it has not," he says. "It's very humbling and lovely to know how much the characters still mean to people now and if it brings them to the theatre, that's the best."

Felton was the first of the original cast to return to the character on stage, but he will not remain alone for long. Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley, is set to join him on Broadway in February. Felton called Grint immediately upon hearing the news—a rare moment of initiative from two actors he describes as typically poor at maintaining phone contact. "Who doesn't want to see Rupert Grint play Ron Weasley again?" he asks. He offers no advice to his former co-star, laughing at the suggestion. Grint has already worked on Broadway. If anything, Felton says, he would be the one learning from him. More than twenty years after they first met on set, Felton describes Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, and Emma Watson as family, though the demands of their careers have scattered them across the globe. Their support since his return to Draco has been, he says, "fantastic."

While Felton and Grint reclaim their roles on stage, a new generation is preparing to step into these characters for an HBO television adaptation set to air later this year. Felton recently met Lox Pratt, who will play Draco in the series. He saw something of himself in the young actor—a confidence and charm, a facility with the craft. Their families have already begun corresponding. Felton has encouraged Pratt to be "as cheeky as possible—but professional first." He does not worry about the scrutiny the new cast will face. "You just enjoy it for what it is," he says. "What you don't know doesn't hurt you."

The longer format of television, Felton suggests, offers something the films could not: room to breathe. Two hours of screen time forced difficult choices about what to include from the books. A television series can linger. "We had two hours to fit in a lot of content and the wizarding world is vast, so it's exciting to know they can dive in deeper." He hopes audiences will use this opportunity to explore Draco more fully—to understand the character beyond the antagonist role the films required.

Felton has not tried to distance himself from Harry Potter, as some actors might. The franchise, he says, has given him "a life I could never have imagined." It continues to bring people together from every corner of the earth. When asked if this Broadway run is truly his final time as Draco, he hesitates. "I suppose I said 15 years ago that was the end of Draco and I was leaving him forever, but here I am," he says. "It's hard to say with any certainty what's to come."